Monday, January 11, 2010

Well, it seems like i received some favourable comments towards my blog about the basic knowledge of photography written in chinese. Some even suggested me to write in English as some of the terms/jargons are easier to understand in english. And so this blog was wrote..

Why suddenly i started writing tis kind of blog?One day i was playing wit my DSLR while my gal gal chatting wit her frens. I played played played then suddenly had the gush of writin tis kind of basic photography knowledge in my blog so tat all my frens can learn bout it. So, if u dun haf a camera, go n buy 1.. if u ady own a point n shoot camera, upgrade it into a prosumer cam.. if u do haf a prosumer cam, upgrade it to DLSR!!! And canon better! As i can share ur lens, flash and evything.. hehe..

In this post, i wil be introducing shutter and aperture.

Wat is shutter?Shutter acts like a gate that controls the passage of light into the camera. By controlling shutter speed, u can control how long the shutter is opened or closed, thus controlling the amount of light entering the camera. The slower the shutter speed, more light wil be permitted into the camera, and as a result the photo taken wil also be brighter. Other than using shutter speed to control the exposure of a photo(brighter or darker), shutter speed can either be used to freeze movement or creating dynamics in a shot. Erm, i think it can be explain better in photo than words, lets look at some examples below.

The photos below was taken using TV mode(a mode that allows u to control the shutter speed where the camera wil accomodate the aperture):

As shown in the exif(exif shows the info of the photo, ie. model of the camera, lens, aperture, shutter and ISO) of the photo, the photo was taken wit shutter 1/320(shutter opened for 1/320 second). U can notice tat the movement of the mocing fan blades were frozen. The shape of the blades can be seen quite clearly.

S/P: 1/80s

S/P: 1/40s

S/P: 1/20s

S/P: 1s

Noticed the diff between the photos?Yup, the fan blades became blur, but the dynamics increase, letting u noe tat the blades are moving fast.Can think of any use for long shutter?For example, tis photo, wit a long shutter, the light of car passing thru became a line of interesting light.use ur creativity! ur imagination! Many stunning photo can be produce wit tis effect!

Next, aperture.An aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. It controls depth of field, sharpness of the image and working together with shutter to control exposure.Complicated?Again, observe the photos below which were taken using AV mode(controls aperture). My camera focus in on the water bottle, but try to observe about the sharpness of the purse and the fluorescent light behind.

Aperture: F3.5 (the smaller the digit, the larger the aperture opening)

Aperture: F7.1

Aperture: F13

Aperture: F22

The fluorescent light and purse looked sharper when the aperture is smaller(big F value). Normally if u like to take scenaries, the aperture is best at F8 and above, then all the scenes wil be sharper.In the case of portrait, photographers prefer bigger aperture(small F value, normallyTats all for today! Class dismisses!!!